Opening reception Saturday at Kehler Liddell For Jacobs and Dubicki show

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Ave., New Haven, (203) 389-9555
Emilia Dubicki & Blinn Jacobs
Through Oct. 9, 2011.
Opening reception: Sat., Sept. 10, 5—7 p.m.

Press release

Kehler Liddell Gallery is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of new work by Emilia Dubicki and Blinn Jacobs.

Emilia Dubicki uses intuition and memory to determine composition, color movement and brushwork in her abstract paintings. While her imagery references water and landmass, she avoids true representation. For her second show at Kehler Liddell Gallery, Dubicki will present a series of paintings that investigate the idea of a collective memory.

Philosopher Maurice Halbwachs (Wikipedia entry)wrote extensively on collective memory in post WWI Europe, explaining it as “a current of continuous thought” governed by sociological qualities, irreducible to individual memories and physical existence. The Surrealists similarly took up these ideas. In this new series, Dubicki activates shared, subconscious landscapes, by expressing moods or feelings in visceral movements of paint that seek to resonate within her viewers.

Dubicki received a residency grant from the Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, N.M. in 2000 and 2003, as well as a Vermont Studio Center residency grant in 2004. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, California, Utah, Korea and Japan. She has been published in the New Haven Advocate, New Haven Register, New Haven Independent, Big Red and Shiny, Connecticut Art Scene, and NY ARTS Magazine. Last April she was interviewed on WNPR and this summer her paintings will appear on the USA network TV show “Royal Pains.” Dubicki currently lives and works in New Haven, CT.

Blinn Jacobs explores the ways that color, line, shape and surface may inform movement, balance and weight in her minimalist works. For her fourth show at Kehler Liddell Gallery, Jacobs will present new work from the "Counterpoise Series," new work from the "Tie Rod Ribbon Series," new drawings and a never before exhibited corner installation.

Early on in her career, Blinn Jacobs became interested in the Suprematist master, Kazimir Malevich. Malevich used the black square as a protagonist and generator of other forms that dipped and spiraled about his picture plane. Jacobsʼ works similarly lack the horizons and gravity systems of the black square, and take issue with the space that art occupies. Her corner installation specifically addresses the relationship between the site of the work and the sight of the viewer.

Jacobs studied at the Yale School of Art as a special student for four years and received her MFA in painting from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. Her work as been in numerous one-person shows, including the University of Wyoming Art Museum in Laramie, WY, Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA, Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, CT, and the Kunstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany. She has received awards from the CT Commission on the Arts, the Slivermine Arts Center, and fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany. She was recently invited to exhibit in the 2011 Florence Biennale. Jacobs lives and works in Branford, CT.

Friday night opening at Gallery 360 in New haven high rise

Gallery 360
360 State St., New Haven
Emilia Dubicki and Jonathan Waters: State of the Moment
Through July, 2011.
Opening Reception: Fri., Apr. 15, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Gallery 360, New Haven, is pleased to present State of the Moment, in the expansive, light filled lobby gallery space of New Haven’s newest residential high rise. The exhibition pairs the New Haven area artists Emilia Dubicki and Jonathan Waters for their first show as a duo.

Comprised of paintings by Dubicki, sculptures and collages by Waters, along with five collaborative mixed medium works by the two, the exhibition focuses on being in the moment while making and viewing the artwork. The paintings and sculpture are big and bold while the collages and collaborations are small and intimate. Scale, perception, and personal interpretation interest both artists.

Nature often serves as a starting point for Emilia Dubicki’s paintings that then traverse the imagery and structures of external landscapes—rocks, piers, water, sky, shadows, light—fused with journeys into a more internal landscape of the spirit. The resulting paintings are made in the studio. Compilations of memories, emotions and visuals are interpreted and expressed in the moment of painting where there is no distance between vision, feelings and the brush.

In his current work, Jonathan Waters incorporates elements of earlier wall pieces and sculptures (drawing in space) with some more recent reductionist work. His sculptures elicit a variety of experiences as one moves around them: what is hidden, what is revealed? His Mill House Series of collages, completed during a 2011 stay at a 1780’s plantation house in the St. Lucy parish of Barbados, elicit architectural references, as well as more sinister and spiritual elements that inform the work generated by spaces they were created in.

Questions of scale

A-Space Gallery at West Cove Studios
30 Elm St., West Haven, (203) 966-9700
Scale Factor
Through May 15, 2011.

I didn't spend much time taking notes at Saturday's Scale Factor opening at A-Space Gallery, located in West Cove Studios in West Haven. So this post's textual element will be fragmentary. The show features primarily paintings, the loose theme concerned with elements of scale.

On facing walls are both a series of miniature paintings by Emilia Dubicki and a large-scale work, "You Remember the Sky." Dubicki's paintings often reference real landscapes. "You Remember the Sky," according to Dubicki, is a work of the imagination untethered to any particular real world locale; the title comes from a poetic fragment inscribed in the bottom left of the work. Still, the sense of landscape is embedded within its gestural sweep of bold colors: elemental, fragrant with wind and sea brine. Dubicki's paintings on the facing wall, probably little more than 5" by 5", are more intimate, as if she is concentrating on just one element in a larger gestalt.



Dubicki's miniatures invite, almost demand, that the viewer inspect them closely. Cham Hendon's "Equal Justice Under Law," hung to their right, is a massive acrylic painting that paradoxically thrusts a viewer back to take it all in while pulling you in to absorb the painterly details. The "big picture" is of the imposing facade of an official court building. But by fusing his colors with a gel medium, Hendon creates swirls of colored abstraction within the overall representational aesthetic, as can be seen in the images below.



Jonathan Waters' (Web) works strike me as engaging more with perspective factor than scale factor. Although many of them are quite large—primarily painted panels inhabiting both the realms of painting and sculpture—they pique the interest particularly by considering them from different angles. One large work, when viewed directly, appears to be a series of several wood panels painted black and abutted against each other. But the edges of some of the panels are painted white. Viewed from the side, the white edges are visible and merge with the white wall on which the work is hung, creating the illusion that there are three separate black panels hung in close proximity.



Other works in the show:

Two Gerald Saladyga (Web) works from 1997, "Monoliths (Installation)" and "Monolith (Blue)":



Larry Morelli's (Web) "The Ghost in the Machine":


Chris Joy's (Web) Untitled (acrylic on wood):

Saturday opening at A-Space Gallery in West Haven

A-Space Gallery at West Cove Studios
30 Elm St., West Haven, (203) 966-9700
Scale Factor
Through May 15, 2011.
Opening Reception: Sat., Apr. 9, 4—8 p.m.

Press release

Scale Factor, a group exhibition, is now on view at A-Space Gallery at west Cove Studios. There will be an artists' reception for the show this Saturday, from 4—8 p.m. According to artist Jonathan Waters, "We all deal with scale in our work intuitively—proportions within a work, overall size, smaller elements making up a larger piece, heroic small pieces. I had hoped to create some dialogue around the subject, sort of a stepping-off point…and deliberately kept it loose." The notion of "scale" is the common thread. Waters says the show includes some works from the nineties and more recent works made for the show.


The exhibiting artists are Cat Balco (Web), Sharon Butler (Web), Ethan Boisvert (Web), Emilia Dubicki (Web), Cham Hendon (Web), Chris Joy (Web), Larry Morelli (Web), Jerry Saladyga (Web), Jean Scott, Brian Gill Wendler (Web) and Jonathan Waters.

Open Tues.—Sun., 1—4 p.m., or by appointment: (203) 627-8030.

Sunday opening at Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Ave., New Haven, (203) 389-9555
I…and Love…and You
Jan. 27—Mar. 6, 2011
Opening reception: Sun., Jan. 30, 3—6 p.m., with Artists’ Talk at 3 p.m.

Press release

Kehler Liddell Gallery is pleased to present I…and Love…and You, a group exhibition of paintings, photographs, sculpture and works on paper that examine the contemporary complexities of honest communication in exchanges related to love. Artists include: Joseph Adolphe, Edith Borax-Morrison, Amy Browning, Frank Bruckmann, Jason Buening, Susan Clinard, Rod Cook, Emilia Dubicki, Matthew Garrett, John Harris, Lisa Hesselgrave, Gigi Horr Liverant, Blinn Jacobs, Keith Johnson, Kristina Kuester-Witt, Lawrence Morelli, Hank Paper, Joseph Saccio, Gerald Saladyga, Deirdre Schiffer, Alan Shulik, Gar Waterman and Marjorie Wolfe.

The title of the exhibition references an indie-folk song by the Avett Brothers that tells the story of a man who cannot utter the simple phrase “I love you.” He is plagued by the radical differences between speaking and acting on feelings of love and hate. He fights with words, preferring verbal attacks to physical attacks, and loves with action, preferring courtship to intimate profession.

The show will illuminate the great love dysfunctions of our time, place and culture by addressing the quiet underpinnings of love and its converse aspects, such as: romance and sex, ambiguity and directness, polygamy and monogamy, naiveté and maturity, honesty and deceit, and madness and betrothal.

A selection of works will investigate the psychological dimensions of love that arise in Harold Pinter’s 1963 play, “The Lover.” The 50-minute play follows the erotic escapades of a long-married British couple that engage in an afternoon of fantasy role-playing. The husband makes 3 visits to his house as an illicit “lover,” assuming the role of a young park keep, an aggressive mugger and a kidnapper. The couple forces each other into and out of jealousy in a series of small actions that raise the drama to uncomfortable boiling points.

During the run of “I and Love and You”, Elm Shakespeare Company will perform eight nights of “The Lover.” The theatrical stage will occupy the center of the gallery, and seating will take place in the round, so that the set and audience will be surrounded by the works. In this setting, the play will act out themes expressed in the images: power struggles, verbal dominance, game playing, moving beyond reason, and falling out of love.

Performances will take place February 3—6 & 10—13; Thursday-Friday: 8 p.m.; Saturday: 8 and 10 p.m.; Sunday 4 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. The Special Benefit Performance will take place on Friday, February 11, 6:30 p.m., $75 per ticket; hors d'oeuvres and wine will be served. Please visit the Elm Shakespeare Company Web site for tickets.

Friday night art opening and Christmas party at A-Space, West Cove Gallery

West Cove Studio & Gallery
30 Elm St., West Haven, (203) 966-9700
sameness-difference-variance
Emilia Dubicki: Cold Suite
Bridges, Inc.
Dec. 6, 2010—Jan. 2, 2011
Opening Reception: Fri., Dec. 10, 6—10 p.m.

Press release

sameness-difference-variance is a group exhibition at West Cove Studio & Gallery running Dec. 6, 2010—Jan. 2, 2011. Organized by Eric Litke, the exhibition brings together work by eight Connecticut artists who share an interest in serial approaches to presenting their imagery, and creates a dialogue between the traditional poles of "painting" and "photography".

Included are works by: John Bent (Web), Cham Hendon (Web), Keith Johnson (Web), Eric Litke, Jeff Ostergren (Web), Jessica Schwind (Web), Mark Williams (Web), and Robert Zott (Web). The opening reception is Fri., Dec. 10 from 6—10 p.m. Open Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m.—4 p.m. and weekdays by chance or appointment: (860) 878-5589.

Also on view will be Cold Suite, an installation of drawings by Emilia Dubicki (Web); Bridges, Inc., a photograph show curated by Harold Shapiro (Web) and other works by studio artists throughout the building.

Gallery 195 show opens Tuesday featuring Dubicki paintings, Peterson photography

Gallery 195
195 Church St., 4th floor (NewAlliance Bank), New Haven, (203) 772-2788
Emilia Dubicki & Tom Peterson
June 7—Aug. 27, 2010.
Opening reception: Tues., June 8, 5—7 p.m.

Press release
The Arts Council of Greater New Haven presents an exhibition of works by Connecticut artists Emilia Dubicki and Tom Peterson at Gallery 195 at NewAlliance Bank, 195 Church St., 4th floor, New Haven. The exhibition will be on display during bank hours from June 7 through August 27, 2010. An artists' reception is scheduled for Tues., June 8, from 5—7 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

This exhibition showcases paintings and photographs by Connecticut artists Emilia Dubicki and Tom Peterson that explore abstraction through the use of color and light.
Emilia Dubicki's work has been exhibited in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Utah, and Japan. Locally, her work has been exhibited at the Player's Lounge Invitational Exhibition at the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament in New Haven, A-Space at West Cove Studio and Gallery, Kehler Liddell Gallery, Artspace, Artspace's City-Wide Open Studios, Arts & Literature Laboratory, and Visions Toward Wellness Gallery in Stony Creek, among others. Dubicki is represented by the Julie Heller Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Kehler Kiddell Gallery in New Haven .


Tom Peterson's photography has been exhibited throughout Connecticut. Selected exhibitions have included The New Haven Seen: Existence, Stagnation, & Morphosis (2005) at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven's Small Space Gallery (now the Sumner McKnight Crosby Jr. Gallery); The Art of Food: All Consuming (2005), presented by Artspace in partnership with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas; Artspace's City-Wide Open Studios (2006); Cultural Passages 2007 at Creative Arts Workshop; and Images 2008 at the Shoreline Arts Alliance, among others. Most recently, Peterson's work was the focus of Passing By, a solo show at City Gallery in New Haven.


For more information about this exhibition and Gallery 195 at NewAlliance Bank, call the Arts Council at (203) 772-2788.

Two receptions Saturday at A-Space in West Haven

A-Space at West Cove Studios
30 Elm St., West Haven, (203) 627-8030
Large Scale Drawings
May 15—Aug. 15, 2010
James Reed: Works on Paper
May 1—31, 2010.
Artists reception for both shows: Sat., May 15, 4—6 p.m.

Press release

Two exhibits open this Sat. afternoon in A-Space Gallery at West Cove Studios in West Haven.

A-Space at West Cove Studios presents an exhibition of drawings by 10 artists that explore their expression in human scale—or greater—in a variety of mediums. Works by Joseph Adolphe, Alexis Brown, Sue Bradley, Emilia Dubicki, Dorothy Powers, James Reed, Tom Stavovy, Nomi Silverman, David Taylor and Mark Williams. Large Scale Drawings will be up into August.

Also, through the end of May, check out exquisite wood cuts and chine colle prints (see image) by James Reed in his show Works on Paper.

Quick notes from CWOS 2009, part 1

Artspace
City-Wide Open Studios
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
City-Wide Open Studios
Oct. 2—4, 2009

With City-Wide Open Studios taking place within the compressed time frame of one weekend, I decide to start my sojourn over at West Cove Studios in West Haven (rather than have my entire Saturday given over to Erector Square). This site is notable both for the printmaking co-op founded by Roy Smith and for its vast expanses of walls well suited to function as gallery space.

My first stop is with sculptor Jonathan Waters. Waters' expansive studio has a view of the water. Through Oct. 18, he is sharing the wall space of his studio/gallery with painter Emilia Dubicki, showing his "Samurai" series of wall sculptures—both large and small works. Several of his large sculptures occupy floor space.

The smaller of these are made of wood veneer and black paper. They have the looping, geometric presence of Russian Constructivism. Waters tells me he calls them the "Samurai" series because of the motion they suggest.

"They're of the moment. Fragile, like our fragile existence," he says, bemused. In a sense, they are gestural sculptures, unlikely to hold together once removed from the wall on which they were created. That fact doesn't concerns Waters. "The mechanics of it is probably the least interesting art of it for me." It is the use of the materials and their receptivity to the forms he wants to create that interest Waters.

"And there is a kind of physicality involved in doing it. It's almost like a drawing that is three-dimensional," says Waters. "And I'm working out ideas. They're sort of sketches. For what, I don't know."

The larger sculptures share the sense of active energy even though they are constructed from harder, heavier, more substantial materials. Using primarily cut wood boards and plywood, selectively painted black, Waters clustered them in kinetic diagonals. They reveal themselves as the viewer walk around them.

Where Waters is working with blacks and natural wood grain tones, Emilia Dubicki's oil paintings pop with throbbing color. Like Waters' sculptures, they convey a sense of motion and their compositions owe a debt to geometric abstraction (although Dubicki considers them all "nature paintings").

"I paint fast. If I can't get the painting out in one shot, I want to walk away," she tells me. Referring to the painting "Miami Vice," Dubicki says, "I did walk away from this painting and came back another day." She notes that she used a palette knife and a plastic knife "to get a lot of blue on there." The use of the plastic knife is suggested by the lines in the paint left by its serrated edge. I ask about a pleasing accumulation of abstract detail in the lower left corner of the work.

"I try not to think about it too much. If it splatters and the splatter works, it stays," Dubicki says.

•••

I didn't get to meet the artist Barkev Gulessarian but a couple of his works riveted my attention. One was a large hollow sculpture, a Buddha with a dog head seated crosslegged in a robe and painted gold. It projected an odd, goofy serenity.

Gulessarian's other work that captivated me was a large "hippie painting," for lack of a better way of describing it. Painted on three large panels of plywood, it depicts a naked couple lounging toward the back of their pad with a large fetal figure in the foreground. A stereo system sits on the floor to the left. The pictorial details are rendered in simple black painted linework over large areas of poster style colors. The unpainted, exposed surfaces of the plywood are perfectly at home in the factory environment. The painting works because of the believabilty of the scene—Gulessarian's effective use of perspective and depth and the naturalistic flow of the figurative shapes. It should be scented with patchouli and outfitted with a psychedelic exploitation soundtrack.

•••

Anita Soos is showing a few large charcoal drawings in her "Water Walking" series, which she started in 2004. She tells me that she has been photographing water for 20 years.

"What I was interested in was capturing what water felt like," says Soos. "I wanted to get the feeling of what water was doing rather than seeing what water was doing. Water holds mysteries. It holds light, shadow, movements and events and layers."

She notes that one of the drawings, "Water Walking: Primary Disturbance," turns the imagery up on end. The drawing seems to pulsate. The idea of "water walking" turns water "into the event of what it does, walking across whatever surface you're looking at. I wanted it to have a more active role, a more poetic role than just saying what it was."

•••

While at West Cove I also have the opportunity to speak with artists Evie Lindemann and Barbara Marks about their works.

Lindemann, who is a professor of art therapy, is showing etchings, collage and a kind of prayer installation in the gallery space of the printmaking co-op. One series of her etchings is of different color prints of a New Age-y plate called "Mythic World," a piece she worked on while studying with the Mexican artist Gilberto Guerrero in the state of Guanajuata, located in the highlands 5 1/2 hours northwest of Mexico City. It features swirling imagery of an open hand (a reference to a serious hand injury Lindemann suffered a couple of years ago), a male figure, a large dove-like bird, fish forms and small figures that look like they are dancing or swimming. (Lindemann tells me they are actually pilgrims in a sacred Mexican church.) Explicating some of the symbolism, Lindemann tells me, "the bird is a transformational agent for me."

Barbara Marks says, "I love the idea of objective abstraction, not non-objective abstraction." What she is referring to in this case is using an iconic shape—a birthday cake—in a large series to evoke a range of emotions. It is a series on "temporality," in general. But specifically, the 75 monotypes of different birthday cakes is an homage to her husband who died at the age of 75 a couple of years ago. Marks notes that the imagery has a real effect on viewers.

"People will see the cakes and automatically start sharing stories about birthdays and the passage of time," she says.

•••

From West Cove I travel over to Erector Square, which easily absorbs the rest of the day. With a wealth of artists to visit and limited time, I don't bother with taking notes. High points include viewing Willard Lustenader's (Web) virtuoso oil paintings based on still lifes of paper cutouts; meeting and talking with Geoffrey Detrani (Web) about his layered drawings that juxtapose natural and architectural imagery; and Mary Lesser's (Web) gouache postcard paintings of scenes from her travels on the road.

Sunday afternoon opening at Kehler Liddell Gallery

Kehler Liddell Gallery
873 Whalley Ave., New Haven, (203) 389-9555
No Constraints: Emilia Dubicki & Edith Borax Morrison
Through July 5, 2009
Artist Reception: Sun., June 7, 3—6 p.m.

Press release

Emilia Dubicki's paintings are inspired by nature and abstraction seen in the environment. The work contains a visual blurring between the physical or material world and a more personal world of mind and spirit. Dubicki joins what can be seen with what is felt and imagined—allowing the outer world to serve as metaphor for her internal landscapes.

Edith Borax Morrison identifies with the mythological mortal Arachne, who -condemned for her great skills - is transformed into an endlessly weaving spider. Borax Morrison is compelled, pen in hand, to endlessly weave configurations of free flowing images. "Pen weaving" from blank page, a process that generates and defines her work, she maintains access to the unconscious alongside constant assessment of composition and emotional response.

No Constraints defines an attitude, a self motivating creative directive and its results. Neither artist is without structure or intention in their abstract images. Still, Dubicki and Borax Morrison revel in a certain freedom. Unstressed discipline, intellectual curiosity, and a joyful compulsion to work are evident in this exhibition of abstract art.

There will be an artist reception on Sun., June 7, 3-6 p.m. Gallery Admission and Reception are free.

There will be Artist Talks with Emilia Dubicki and Edith Borax Morrison on Thurs., June 18, at 7 p.m. Meet the artists and join the conversation!